


Drifters

by Alyndra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Reinterpretation, Dark Sam Winchester, F/M, Fix-It, Manhandling, POV Outsider, Rough Sex, Season/Series 08, Suicidal Thoughts, Under-negotiated Kink, under-negotiated serial killer kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-03 06:59:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4091386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alyndra/pseuds/Alyndra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amelia's fucked up. The creepy drifter isn't scaring her off.</p><p>Sam's barely holding. His choices are terrible or epically terrible.</p><p>Together, they're… no, still really fucked up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Amelia's Inner Monologue (Drowning)

**Author's Note:**

> I accidentally challenged myself to make the Sam/Amelia storyline work. 
> 
> I adored Benny, but it took me awhile to figure out how to like Amelia. I did eventually willfully misinterpret her story until it was interesting (to me), but please note that I rated this high not only for sexual content but also for dark, suicidal, and fucked-up themes. 
> 
> The 'undernegotiated serial killer kink' tag is the one to heed. Woobie!Sam fans - beware.

The unhinged guy who couldn't watch where he was driving had had at least a rudimentary concept of first aid, or the dog wouldn't still be alive on her operating table right now. She touched the bandaging packed in the flank curiously, and decided it would hold while she addressed the internal injuries.

She wondered if Don had had anybody trying to apply pressure to stem his bleeding, if he had bled out slowly instead of dying quickly in an explosion. If Amelia would ever get any answers.

If answers would even mean anything, since nothing was going to bring him back.

She shook her head, focused on the dog, and prepped for surgery.

\----------

Surprisingly, the guy was still in the waiting room several hours later, as dawn was coming in through the window. He looked calmer, but also like he might wait there forever. He looked as though the world held nothing much of interest other than whether a dog that wasn't even his was going to live or die. 

The dog had no microchip, no tags: it was hard to see under the fur, but she'd just been in its guts and it obviously hadn't been eating well recently. Amelia made an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment decision that the stray dog and the stray guy in the waiting room probably belonged together. What the hell, she'd been turning over a new leaf with impulsive decisions lately.

Distantly she wondered if she'd get fired for it when the day shift came in, but it was hard to care much about her own life getting any worse than it already was. Her husband was dead and she hadn't been able to stand her home or friends or family any longer. All she did anymore was drink and work, and probably at some point work would be over too.

She was suddenly and irrationally angry at this man for coming in yelling up a storm about whatever problems in his own life he was projecting onto the life of an innocent animal and her innocent vet tech and clinic. She was nasty about it as she guilted him into taking the dog, part of her hoping she could pick a fight, but he didn't rise to the bait, agreeing to adopt swiftly enough that she knew she'd been right. The local shelter was too full and the no-kill campaign was fizzling: if he didn't take the animal, she would have to, and she didn't think she could open her heart up again.

It hurt too much.

\-------------

Of course she had serious doubts if not actual freak-outs after she gave in to a niggling sense of having seen his face somewhere before and Googled the name he'd signed the paperwork with. A prison mugshot was the first thing that popped up and it all got immeasurably worse from there. She wasn't sure what she should be feeling, maybe like she'd had an incredibly narrow escape, but mostly she felt the insane urge to go rip the poor dog back away from him, to get it somewhere safe. But of course they would both be long gone.

She looked again (it was like watching some horrifying train wreck) at the video of Sam Winchester and his psycho brother shooting a bank vault full of people with matching grins on their faces. How the hell did someone get that crazy?

Of course after that she stumbled on an even crazier bunch of what seemed to be fans of a pulp horror novel series claiming that all their crimes were invented by an evil FBI conspiracy to hide the truth about monsters and demons running everywhere, and that Sam was in fact the Saviour of the World.

Amelia rolled her eyes and shut the laptop in disgust. That's what she got for being curious, fine.

Shame about the dog, though. Who knew, the guy had seemed so concerned, maybe he wasn't actually planning on killing it. Maybe it would be okay.

Amelia snorted. She hadn't really believed anything would be okay since the day she got word that Don wasn't coming back to her.

\-------------

She'd seen the drifter-who-couldn't-drive-properly, Sam, around her motel a couple times. She nearly jumped out of her skin before deciding that as it was the only place to stay in town and she'd just pinned a convalescing animal on him, he probably wasn't staying here to stalk her. And it was hard to picture the guy patiently holding a bandaged, cone-headed dog upright so it could go potty as a deranged killer, even with online videographic evidence that may or may not be true.

That comforting line lasted until the minute she walked in to find him standing in her kitchen. Yelling what the hell seemed like a restrained response, under the circumstances.

She wasn't really sure how the conversation turned into refusing to defend her drinking habits to him, but after he left, she did think about what it said about her that she reacted to her home being invaded by a creepy drifter serial killer by trying to start an argument, instead of running or calling the cops.

The real kicker was, part of her was disappointed he'd left peacefully.

That was the first night she got herself off wondering about the possibilities, if he hadn't chosen to go. In the morning she decided her brain was exceptionally fucked up, but then that wasn't really news. If she had been a decent person who knew when not to pick a fight, Don would never have enlisted, of course. 

Don would still be alive.

\-----------------

He didn't deny being a serial killer.

Part of Amelia was shocked at how easy and open her body language was staying even as her mind boggled at her own audacity, throwing the actual words serial killer at Sam Winchester who'd just invited himself into her apartment for the second time, and the rest of her was busy freaking out over how calmly he'd accepted the accusation.

Actually, scratch that. By freaking out, she apparently meant _getting turned on as hell_.

He was moving closer now, sitting down and settling in, pinning her in place with a stare as he asked (like he already knew the answer) if she was alone in the world. She couldn't lie. She should, she should say she had parents and people who would miss her, it was even true, but she didn't feel like it. She hadn't felt truly alive in months, why should she care if she died? In some ways it might even be a relief.

Amelia had a sudden clarity she hadn't felt for a long time, realizing that she wasn't afraid of anything he might do to her. It didn't matter if there was pain. She'd take anything over the deteriorating monotony of self-hatred and numbness her life had fallen into. 

She smiled up at him, relaxed and… interested. She might be screwed in the head, but for right now, she was okay with that.


	2. Sam's Inner Monologue (Treading Water)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has lots of really terrible ideas.

Sam and Amelia had had a drink, and then a few more drinks. Sam's dog had long since fallen asleep on the floor.

Crazy Vet Lady was giving Sam all the signals he remembered from his months of casual hook-ups without a soul, signals that meant she'd be willing to take whatever he wanted to do to her and beg for more.

He was a lot more tempted to take her up on it than he'd ever been when Dean was around to pull out a terrible pick-up line with that rougish smile that made them work. Though even Dean had come down a few keys over the past few years.

Well, they'd been stressful years.

Sam'd moved closer to Amelia without consciously deciding to. She didn't back up, even though he knew he was looming. She wasn't scared.

She probably should be.

\-------------------

Dean was gone. Dean was gone and Cas was gone, probably sucked into Purgatory with Dick Roman and the rest of the Leviathans, because a simple locating spell was enough to know he wasn't anywhere on Earth. Sam knew that anyway; if Dean was on Earth, he'd have at least found a phone by now if he hadn't made it back to Sam already. He probably wasn't in Heaven or Hell; Sam could summon Crowley or even an angel if he had to, though all the ones he knew were dead, which would make it harder. But they wouldn't be inclined to tell him what he wanted to know.

He could torture them, of course. Tie them in a solid trap and slice away until he drew the truth from blood and screams, until he was satisfied they'd told him everything he wanted to know.

But Heaven and Hell were in a tenuous, precarious peace for the first time since… Sam didn't even know how long. Crowley was a nasty piece of work, but he could at least be trusted to keep control of Hell without trying to reopen Lucifer's cage. And that went double for Heaven; Castiel had barely won his war against the majority of angels that wanted to set the Apocalypse right back on track. It probably had pissed them off, Sam considered, that their vaunted leader Michael was caged too.

Well, Sam wasn't sorry; Michael had made his choices and not cared about the cost: he hadn't ever thought that he would have to pay it, rather than the humans whose planet he was about to ruin.

But if Sam started torturing the new leadership of Heaven, they might decide they'd rather have Michael back after all, Lucifer and Apocalypse included.

If Sam thought that they actually had Dean, he might still take that risk; consequences be damned. But they probably didn't. And Dean probably wasn't in Hell either; Crowley had been far too smug, lording it over Sam as he stole Kevin and disappeared; he wouldn't have resisted bragging if he'd actually had Dean and Cas.

No, Dean was far more likely to be in Purgatory, if he hadn't simply discorporated into nothingness. Sam wasn't sure if anything could be done about being discorporated; time travel, maybe. But the only angel who liked him enough to help with that was gone too. 

There was Chronos, the god of time. Time-travel had definitely been in his bailiwick. Too bad they'd killed him; that bridge was burnt. Sam could maybe try asking Death: but Sam didn't want to die before he started. Dean would probably be pissed about that.

Even if Sam did turn back time, was it worth it if Dick Roman ate the world?

So back to Purgatory. He needed more information than he had; but if information on Purgatory was readily available, he wouldn't have had to spend a whole year capturing monster Alphas for Crowley. Even the angels hadn't known much; or Castiel wouldn't have had to rely on Crowley for it in the first place. Maybe the upper leadership knew more; maybe they didn't. Maybe if Sam made a determined effort he could wring something out of them… but that went right back to whether he was willing to risk destabilizing them again.

Not without more to go on, he decided reluctantly.

Crowley probably knew more.

No, Sam knew exactly what Crowley knew. He could open a portal with virgin blood, more blood, and an eclipse, and through it would pour all the souls in Purgatory.

Sam would have Dean back, and Cas too. On the downside, all the monsters would eat everybody.

Setting off the end of the world once was enough for Sam, he wasn't doing it again.

He needed a different plan. 

The first time the portal had been opened, only one soul had come through. But Eleanor had said it was pure chance she happened to be there. Purgatory had millions of souls; Sam didn't have millions of eclipses.

Plus, whatever did come through would take turns trying to kill him and wreak havoc. Sam didn't have backup; he needed Dean for something like this.

Only Dean was gone, which brought him full circle.

Maybe he could find Dean before opening a portal, get a message to him somehow?

Well, there was one sure-fire way of getting to Purgatory that Sam knew of; it was just the return trip that was hard. Any monster that he tried to give instructions to track down Dean would probably be uncooperative once Sam killed it; at most he could expect it to be pissed off enough to try and find his brother and eat him. That would be counterproductive.

Lenore might have done it for him, maybe; but she was dead. Or Amy, if Dean hadn't killed her. Sam didn't know any other monsters who owed him one. Briefly, wistfully, he remembered Madison; he wondered if she was still out there, wandering the wilds of Purgatory somewhere.

He wondered if she hated him now, for sending her there. He hadn't known, then. He'd hoped there was a better place in store: but he hadn't known.

Even if he had known, it probably wouldn't have changed what he had to do.

Did demons go to Purgatory when they died? Maybe Ruby was there too, along with his other exes, right down to his prom date.

Wouldn't Dean be having a blast with that. He could kill them all over again. Assuming things in Purgatory died. Maybe they died temporarily and came back.

Sam was getting maudlin. Focus.

He could always go himself; it wouldn't be hard to find a bit of vampire blood to drink, or some other kind of contagious monster. Then throw himself at the nearest hunter and await results.

Maybe he'd better warn the hunter what he was planning beforehand. It would only be fair.

Yeah, he could hear Dean's voice in his head. Cause that conversation's gonna go down well. Whoever it was would probably think he was crazy, try to stop him from doing it, get him locked up.

He wasn't crazy. (That's what all the crazy people say.)

Maybe he could set it up himself so he wouldn't need a hunter. Sam was pretty sure he could rig up a guillotine, stick his head in, and pull the cord. Only, if vampires could still be cured before their first human snack, were the metaphysics different? Did a soul untainted by murder still go to Purgatory, or could he wind up in Heaven by mistake?

Actually, if he was killing himself, it was probably supposed to be Hell. That point was pretty unambiguous in the texts.

Still, the thought of killing someone just to be sure was not only distasteful, but he also couldn't be sure he would go through with whatever he planned now after going that far. Sam knew intimately how slippery the slope he was contemplating could get. He'd set out with the best of intentions, and before you knew it he'd be covered in blood and damning the consequences.

Dean probably wouldn't be happy to see him, if Sam got himself turned into a monster and killed just so he could get to Purgatory without a return plan.

And there _was_ no return plan, because Sam couldn't be waiting earthside to open a portal, if he was tracking Dean down as a vampire in Purgatory. There was only one of him. He didn't have Dad, or Bobby, or Ruby, or even a freaking guardian angel to help him get Dean back.

Dean was only _probably_ in Purgatory, anyway. All Sam knew for sure was that Dean was gone.

Dean was gone and Sam was alone.

\-------------------

Well, there was a woman looking at him now. A woman who didn't seem to care if she got killed because Sam's life sucked beyond belief. He'd probably come to regret this, but right now Sam couldn't stand listening to his own thoughts spin in endless circles one more instant.

He reached out, watched his own hand as it moved towards her. She had time to turn away, but instead let him touch her, let him cup the side of her face and pull them closer together.

Sam knew he had no business touching any innocent who'd never had monsters in her life, was still free from the rage and terror and milestones marked in violence and death that had measured so much of his own life. After Jess, he'd tried so hard never to involve himself like that again, he'd only let himself go with a werewolf and a demon and what he thought was a siren. Without a soul he hadn't cared; but he couldn't have formed connections then, if he'd wanted to, either.

Now he couldn't help himself any longer.

When he kissed her, it was gentle and at the same time inexorable. "Tell me if I hurt you," he said, standing and pulling her to her feet.

"Tell me if I'm scaring you," and he slid his big hand into her hair and pulled a little, tilting her head back. He leaned in to whisper in her ear.

"If it's more than you want me to, that is."

She whimpered, "Please."

"What do you want, Amelia?"

"Please, make me feel again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback makes my day! <3


	3. The Sex Scene (Breathing)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No, no one's projecting their own issues onto anyone else, why would you ask that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omfg writing this chapter was so hard, y'all, the sex was giving me conniptions.

Amelia shivered as Sam kissed her. He was demanding, desperate, like he'd been starving for human touch. He was wholly unfamiliar in a way that Don had never been; she and Don had grown up together, had known each other as friends long before they had been each other's firsts. She had known Don would never hurt her, would die to keep her safe.

But she had never felt with Don the thrill she felt now with Sam, like she was jumping off a cliff from a dizzying height, only a thin rope stretching out behind her, tethering her to life.

He pivoted and scooped her towards the bed, so effortlessly that she had no chance before she was sprawled across the bedspread. He followed up, his shirt gone and his hands sliding under her shirts, pulling them up. He stripped her quickly and efficiently, mouth moving from her lips to her neck, worrying at the taut line of it as her head arched back.

In another minute they were both fully naked, her legs rising to clamp enthusiastically around his hips as he wasted no time getting down to it. The rhythm was rapid, fierce, but Amelia drank it in. She couldn't stop making small cries as they moved, emotions welling up in her for the first time in ages. All too soon it was over. He climaxed nearly right after she did, both of them collapsing, panting.

She wondered if he would leave now. Or maybe he'd just fall asleep. Maybe he'd tie her to a chair: he looked like someone who'd be capable of tying a woman to a chair.

God, she didn't think she could bear it if he just left right now. What did that say about her?

Their breathing had settled. At last, like a waking bear, Sam stirred. He reached over and slapped her ass. "C'mon, move."

Amelia squeaked. She couldn't help it. Don never slapped her ass; they didn't have that kind of relationship. Belatedly she understood Sam had just wanted them to get off the motel bedspread and between the sheets, and she scrambled into place: but he was looking at her now. She must have reacted weirdly. He started to grin.

"You liked that?"

Amelia once again hesitated, part of her debating the wisdom of admitting (encouraging) it. Screw prudence, she decided. In for a penny, and all that. She met his eyes. "If I tell you to fuck off, will you do it again?"

His grin widened. "Guess you better try it and see," he said, not moving.

She shoved him. "Screw you, Winchester."

He froze, expression darkening. "How'd you know that name?" Suddenly he was looming over her, hand on her throat, pressing just hard enough for her to feel it.

That strange calmness that had carried her this far didn't desert her. "You put it on the paperwork for your dog." Her heartrate was picking up, though. Would he kill her to keep himself from being tracked? "If you're going to kill me over it, we should at least have more sex first, though."

He relaxed and backed off as abruptly as he'd advanced. "Sorry. I'm sorry," he muttered, taking his hand away. "I guess I'm paranoid. I've had... some bad experiences. I should probably go." He rolled over, unable to look at her, to meet her eyes, anymore.

And suddenly now she was terrified, like she should have been, but wasn't, a minute ago. If he left she'd go back to the way things had been, to work and drinking, trying to forget and waiting interminably to just be done with what was left of her life. Anything was better than that. She reached out and caught his shoulder. "Not on my account, you shouldn't."

Maybe he heard some kind of darkness in her voice; maybe he was only just as desperate for an excuse as she was. He faced her again. Reached out and touched her throat where his hand had threatened to choke her. She tilted her head back, inviting. Relaxed. "Gonna get on with it, or what?"

"There's something wrong with you," he said, finally. He shifted and rolled her over, hand falling on her ass in a deliberate spank this time. "You're gonna let me do whatever I want to you, is that it?"

She moaned, squirming until he hauled her across his lap. "Please..."

"You don't even give a fuck, do you?" Smack! His hand fell on her ass. "What could happen, everything you could lose?" His hand fell again and again. "As long as you get what you want, nevermind how it affects anybody else..."

She flinched at the words rather than the sensation this time, and he let her go. She slid limply off his lap to the floor. "No," she denied, reaching back to him. Quickly, before he had a chance to back off again, she bent her mouth to his dick.

He thrust, barely pulling out before pushing her down onto him again. She shuddered, moaned so that he would feel it. Let him set the pace. He fucked into her throat and held himself there, waiting until she ran out of air before letting her up to breathe. Eventually he pulled her back up onto the bed, spread her onto her stomach, and with a few short, hard thrusts between her legs, he was coming.

She lay there as he collapsed next to her, trying to regain control of her gasping breaths. After a minute he reached out and enfolded her in his arms, running his hand soothingly over her hair. She buried her face in his shoulder, ashamed. She'd never… She wasn't… But now she had. And even now, she knew, she wanted to do it again.

Her hips moved against him, almost unconsciously. His hand paused, then crept down her back, feeling for the wetness between her legs. She rocked her hips again, more deliberately. He tilted her face up and kissed her, surprisingly sweetly. "I got you," he said.

As he kissed his way down her body, she stared up at the ceiling, and for the first time since Don left, she let herself feel taken care of.

He took his time, made her feel like she was floating, like she might come unmoored at any moment. And when she finally did, cresting on wave after wave of shimmering pleasure, one of her hands was tangled with one of his, and he was grasping just as tightly as she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't state enough how much it thrills me to get comments or kudos, it brightens my day and rocket-boosts my work on the next part(s)! Thank you so much!


	4. The Talking Scene (Clinging to A Comrade)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter uses more dialogue from the show than I've heretofore relied on. It's a peeve of mine when fanfic is just all the dialogue you already know, so I try not to quote too much, even though all the stuff in the Amelia episodes should still be happening in this fic. But this chapter did require more direct quoting: hopefully it'll still be an interesting take!

"It's been a long time since I let myself go like that."

Amelia was lying on Sam's chest, neither of them moving. He thought that neither of them had any desire to move for a long time.

"Yeah. I know what you mean." Sam wasn't sure he'd ever let himself go like that. Maybe if it was Ruby. He hadn't cared about it if he hurt her. Or when he was soulless, he'd done some pretty fucked-up things then, too, in bed and out of it.

But he'd always tried so hard to keep any of the darkness of his life away from the innocents he knew, civilians he became close to; Jess may have suspected that he had some mysterious past, but he'd never shown her any of it.

Not that that had been enough to save her in the end.

After Jess, he'd known clearly how unforgivable it would be to involve anyone else in his life again. At first he'd thought, maybe once the yellow-eyed demon was dead... But he'd been dead for six, seven years now, and his life had been more fucked up than ever.

He'd held himself back, had only rare sexual encounters, refused to engage with anyone he might have had potential with. Never tried for, or even thought about a second date. It was safer that way, as Dean had always known.

So what had come over him now?

Amelia was talking. "You asked me if I lost someone. I did. My husband. He died in Afghanistan eight months ago."

It clicked into place with an odd lack of surprise, that she too was missing the other half of herself. Sam still listened, with every step he took, for his brother's echoing footfall.

"That must have been..." He started, then couldn't think of any words to describe the abyss of loss. "I can't imagine," he ended, insufficiently.

But it seemed to be enough for Amelia to continue. He curled his hand in her hair as she spoke about her husband, and wondered if he had it in him to let go of her, knowing that they were two broken halves of different wholes, even if, one way or another, it was bound to cost her her life.

Nearly everyone he'd ever been sexually involved with was dead because of the unending shitstorm that was his life. Some of them he'd killed personally: Madison, Ruby, his old prom date Rachel, that bartender from when he was soulless.

If he hadn't thought that one doctor was the siren they were trying to kill, he never would have slept with her. She was lucky to still be alive. At least he thought she was still alive; he hadn't gone back to check. Less than a year ago, Dean had even tracked down and killed the first girl he'd ever kissed, as though to make sure of a clean sweep.

Oh, Sam could argue extenuating circumstances till the cows came home—or more likely, with demons around, they'd keel over and die in their fields, too. But the facts remained, and they added up.

By getting involved with this woman, chances were he was signing her death warrant.

Even if she didn't care about her own life, shouldn't he? Shouldn't he run far and fast, keep going until… well, he didn't know until what, really.

But he wasn't going to, he knew he didn't have it in him to run any more, after everything. After his whole freaking life. It was all he could do to sit tight and wait, to gamble that Dean would somehow find his own way back if he could, instead of… well. Just instead.

\-------

In the morning she was up and out so fast he wasn't even out of bed yet. He was still reeling when she left, struggling to explain that she hadn't been the only one putting herself out, that he didn't pity her because he was every bit as messed up, because he knew what she was going through. But she wouldn't slow down or listen, too busy running, maybe too scared by the emotions they'd dug up the night before.

Sam wasn't sure it would be for the best to make her stay and listen.

\-----

But he was back on her doorstep later in the day. Distantly he was aware that he was acting like the crazy person she'd accused him of being, ignoring every rule of no-strings sex that he'd ever absorbed. He couldn't care. There was a scorching need in him for human connection, for even the barest fragments of understanding from another living soul.

There wasn't anyone anymore to fill that void. But she might know what it was like, a little.

Except based on what she'd said that morning, she still thought that she was alone, that he didn't understand, that no one could.

Sam opened his mouth. "I don't pity you. Okay? I don't," he repeated, emphasizing it to make sure she listened. He had to get through to her. "You and I, we're a lot of things, but we're not to be pitied."

He took a breath, and started to tell her about Dean.

She invited him in, again.


	5. More Sex and Talking About Feelings (Forward Crawl)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Settling in together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're into trigger warnings, I should mention here that a character panics briefly. Ask away for more detail!
> 
> This is the most ambitious and hardest thing I have ever written and I feel very accomplished to have done it. Enormous thanks to my lovely beta [wtgw](http://www.ao3.org/users/wtgw) for helping wrestle Chapter Five into shape and being incredibly encouraging!

The sex was actually better the second time around. They understood each other a little better now; instead of surmising that the other person was probably pretty fucked up, now they knew it. Since nobody had run away like a sane person it meant they were, for sure, both crazy.

That was surprisingly freeing. Anything was suddenly allowable: they followed through on the previous night's suggestion of spanking, Sam holding her firmly pinned across his knees while she yelled and cussed like she’d never left med school.

Sam growled and flipped her around easily, wrenching her legs apart while she squirmed and wriggled, clawing the bedsheets in fruitless efforts to avoid his dick spearing her open. The little choked-off cries she made as he fucked her into the mattress seemed to drive him even wilder; she dug her fingers into his big shoulders and let go even more, encouraging him to go harder even as she felt like she might break apart underneath him.

He didn't break her, though. For someone whose hobby (life's work? The Internet wasn't clear) may or may not have been killing people in a wide variety of ways, he was certainly a very considerate bed-partner, showing rather more care for her comfort and satisfaction than she had for herself. That was a low bar of course, practically nothing. But it was sweet of him all the same. It was weird that he acted as though she had a future, she thought, but she didn't want to argue it.

Not when they could be fucking their brains out.

After a week or so, she vaguely noticed that he'd stopped going back to his own room, and once she paid attention it was clear that his battered duffle had taken up residence in her room. The rest of his scanty possessions were either in his car or tucked neatly into whatever corners of space she wasn't using. It seemed like the sort of thing a normal person should object to, being moved in with without even discussing it, but she couldn't find it in herself to make a big deal out of it. It wasn't like she minded.

Besides, she wasn't even being charged rent anymore since he was still the motel handyman, so she socked away most of her paycheck and spent the rest getting some decent food into him. There was a limited amount of cooking that could be done in her space, but he seemed to need someone to remind him of the importance of eating, so she got some supplies and scraped together a few of the simple meals she knew how to make.

He appreciated it so much she even tried a couple more complex dishes; she rapidly discovered Sam cared surprisingly deeply about health food, made from scratch, with organic produce. He didn't appear to have a great deal of experience with cooking it, though, and greasy junk food made him weirdly nostalgic even if he refused to eat it.

In return for being fed, he kept the room cleaner than she ever had, despite it now containing two grown people and a medium-large dog. Riot was recovering well from his injuries and despite her initial reluctance to get attached, Amelia knew she was really was loving having a dog there to greet her when she got home. Between him and Sam, she found herself spending less time in the dark depths of her grief for Don than she ever would have thought possible.

Sam continued to behave, for the most part, like a normal human being and not some kind of axe murderer.

There were times he was odd, sure. There were some subjects he would quickly change, things he didn't want to talk about, like college experiences, or religion, or that one time Asia's Heat of the Moment had come on the radio and he had immediately twisted like a pretzel and nearly damaged the couch, lunging to violently stab the radio's off button.

He never wanted to watch horror movies, either. She thought it might be because he had been there when his brother died; she had recently developed an aversion to war movies, herself. Instead, they watched goofy comedies and petty sitcom dramas.

She wondered if cop shows might be a sore topic, too. Curiousity got the best of her: she decided to put one on, and watch him closely for signs of stress or anger.

Instead, he seemed to watch the show with a good-natured interest and a surprisingly wide range of trivia. It made her wonder about his experiences with the law, if he didn't seem to hate them for chasing him for so many years, and even arresting him more than once.

She wondered if there was a way to bring it up casually without revealing that she'd googled him.

The show ended. Screw it. "Ever been arrested?" She asked, taking a swig of whiskey from in front of the couch and handing it to him. She felt that stillness go through him that meant he was choosing his answer carefully.

"A few times. Usually because my brother could never stay out of trouble." Sam quirked a smile. "Of course, he was pretty good at getting us out of it, too." He leaned back into the couch, reminiscing. "This one time, he got us arrested on purpose as a favor to a friend. I bitched at him the entire time about it, but it did all work out okay, in the end.”

She nodded. That was way more of an answer than she usually got. Then she realized Sam was developing a glint in his eye. "How about you, any arrests in your rearview mirror?"

She shook her head. "No, I never acted out quite that much. Or at least, the one time I might have gotten caught, Don made sure they thought it was him, instead." She shrugged, staring down at the bottle. "We both ran like hell."

Sam was still staring at her intently. "Why’d you ask? Would you like to be arrested?"

"What?" She asked, thrown off for a second. He straightened up and looked down at her sternly.

"Amelia Richardson, I couldn't help noticing an open bottle of alcohol in your car, ma'am. I'm afraid I'm going to have to bring you in to the station." He stood up to his full imposing height, reaching down to roughly grab her arm and heave her to her feet as well.

She scrambled to get off the couch, flushing as she realized what he meant. "Oh, please,” she simpered, getting into the act, “Officer, I don't want to have anything on my record! Isn't there some other way I could make it up to you?" She begged, starting to grin a little. "Anything else you could do to me?"

He looked down his nose at her. "This is a very serious infraction, you understand. I can't let you go without being punished."

She giggled. "Oh, but you're a fine upstanding officer of the law! Surely you'd never hurt me?"

His eyes darkened at her dare. As she'd meant them to. "Very risky, Mrs. Richardson. I'll have to do whatever it takes to make you take this seriously."

She tried to jerk her arm out of his grip. He held tight and started pulling her towards the bed. By the time they reached it, he'd produced a pair of handcuffs seemingly from nowhere... his duffel? She hadn't noticed as they passed it... he clicked one cuff around her wrist.

"No, I'll be good, officer, I promise..." She playfully tried to keep her other arm out of his reach but he just caught her around the waist and used his longer reach against her.

She shivered with a little thrill.

"I don't think you know the meaning of the word," he told her, darkly amused. "Luckily no one's expecting me back at the station for hours, so I've got time to teach you a lesson you won't forget."

By the time he finished speaking, she'd been unceremoniously deposited in the hardback motel room chair. Her arms were wrenched behind her, just shy of painfully. Sam looped the handcuff chain around a wooden brace just under the seat of the chair before clamping the second cuff around her free wrist. He stood.

"Now. That should hold you there." He surveyed her, up and down. "For long enough, anyway."

She tried but couldn't lift her hands away from the back of the chair. Her legs were free enough that she could have stood, awkwardly stooped and still attached to the chair, but he was still standing right in front of her.

He leaned in and put one of his big hands on the tall back of the chair, brushing her shoulder. She felt her breath coming quicker.

"Nothing was my fault, officer," she smirked up at him, a show of bravado. "I didn't do anything."

"You're not scared of me." He observed, reaching into her shirt to fondle her breast. "I think you should be," he added. He took a step back and unzipped his jeans, slowly, letting the tension build. He pulled out his cock.

She licked her lips. Broke the silence. "Gonna shut me up with your big, fat dick? Fuck me like a real man would? Stuff.... mmphrgh!"

He'd stepped back in and shoved into her mouth, listening in satisfaction as she choked on it. He reached down and twisted a nipple viciously. She jerked and whimpered around him, voice getting indistinct as he thrust.

\-------

One or maybe two orgasms later, she lay flat on her back on the bed, arms above her head, cuffed to the headboard as he slid in and out between her legs, hypnotically regular. He'd been going for a while. Her mind drifted sluggishly.

"Hey," Sam said sharply, noticing. "Don't start checking out on me. I'm not done with you." He leaned down and tugged her ear with his teeth. "You can keep not saying anything, but I know what someone guilty looks like. You've got it locked away inside and you think it'll all be fine if you just pretend hard enough, but that never— _fucking_ —works." He was hammering at her now, huffing. "It just eats away at you until you blow up... unless you tell someone... let it out." He thrust into her even harder. " _Tell me_."

Abruptly she was panicking, struggling against the cuffs, wordless terror coursing through her. He stopped moving. She tried to breathe, panted instead, short desperate shallow gasps as her body refused to inhale properly. Slowly, telegraphing his motions, Sam reached for the handcuff key and unlocked her wrists. As soon as her hands were free they came down and clutched at his broad back. She couldn't form words.

"Shhh, it's okay," he said. "Easy. You don't have to tell me anything. You don't." He soothed a hand down her hair. "I'm not going anywhere," he added, looking a little uncertain, like he was checking whether that was what she wanted him to say.

She finally made herself breathe a little deeper. She was shuddering; deliberately she unclenched her fingers and slowed her breathing down even more until that calmed, too.

"Please don't," she managed. He started to pull away. "Don't go," she corrected. "I'm okay." That wasn't true. "I will be." That was the right direction, maybe.

She moved her hips, experimentally. He was still inside her. His face twisted and his breath caught, kind of amusingly. He was still hard.

She didn't want to talk about what he'd just brought up. "You can keep going," she said.

He groaned, looking torn. She rolled her hips again, and he jerked into her, like he hadn't really meant to but couldn't help it. The corner of her mouth twisted up. "C'mon, baby, don't go soft on me now," she goaded, letting her mouth run instead of thinking. It worked. His arms came in close around her sides, and he drew almost all the way out, only to thrust—slowly, so slowly—back in. Then he did it again.

She let him pick the pace back up gradually. This was okay. She could do this. This was just bodies, movement, nothing to be afraid of, that she couldn't handle.

She didn't like the thought that she couldn't handle other stuff. What had even scared her, just the thought of talking? The idea of a confession?

Maybe she should tell Sam, after all. Tell him what she hadn't been able to tell anyone else; none of her family or friends. She hadn't been able to talk to Don in the first place, even. Wasn't that why he was gone forever, dead halfway around the world?

Sam's pace increased, just then, and gratefully she let herself get caught up in the rhythm, shoving her thoughts to the background. For now. For a little while longer, at least, she'd let herself not think about it.

\---------

"It was never anything like this with Don," she started. It was later, the lights were out, and she was nestled into Sam's side, his arm curved around her. He turned his head slightly on the pillow to indicate he was listening. She made herself keep talking.

"Don and I had been together forever. It was comfortable. He was my best friend, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. But... It was just, he'd treat me so... gently, all the time, in bed, and sometimes I wanted... I wanted him to let go, to figure out we weren't teenagers anymore, that I wasn't going to break."

She wanted to look at Sam, but she thought she might not get through it if she stopped, so she didn't.

"I wanted it rough, sometimes. But it was like I was a dumb teen after all, because I didn't know how to talk about it. I'd open my mouth and I couldn't tell him. So, I just pushed. I'd push him, say stupid mean things and try to make him mad and I didn't even know why, I just kept doing it. And he was so patient, forgave me so much shit, but it built and it kept building up, until finally one day he just snapped.” She felt Sam’s arm around her curl in, ironically protective, his eyes seeking hers, wanting to know.

“Hauled off and punched me in the mouth,” she admitted. “I didn't blame him, after everything I'd said. But he felt terrible. Just awful." She paused, remembering.

"I didn't know—I didn't realize what it would do to him, hurting me. Even if, if I wanted to be hurt—I still couldn't say it. Not to him. The words got all stuck up inside me. He couldn't talk to me about any of it, either. But I thought we'd have time, time to sort it all out." Her hand tightened unconsciously on Sam's skin, digging in.

"Only the next morning, he left. He enlisted, and pretty soon he was gone, and then I got the knock on the door that he was—that he wasn't coming home."

Sam's arm around her tightened again. She buried her head, gasping, fighting off sobs. "I couldn't—how could I tell anybody back home, anybody who'd known the both of us, how I'd screwed us both up so bad? I couldn't face talking about it, and eventually I couldn't even face them anymore, his family, my family, the people we'd gone to school with.

“So I left. Packed up our stuff, or sold it, moved out here where I didn't know anybody and nobody looked at me as, as half of Don and Amy anymore."

Sam rubbed her back as she shuddered, finally shedding tears she couldn't hold back any more.

It was enough right then for Amelia to just breathe, in and out, settling down in some undefinable way as she felt a little bit of the weight she'd been carrying slipping off her shoulders, leaving the rest of her clearer.

Eventually, he started talking.

"My brother and I were really close. We'd pulled each other out of the fire so many times. That was just what we did, whatever came, hell or high water, it was our job to save each other. Keep on fighting.

"But… I went too far, a while ago. I couldn't save him, couldn't get him out of where he was, and I went off the rails." His hand found hers and squeezed.

She was listening keenly; he rarely talked about the darkness in his life that she knew had to be there, regardless of which batch of Internet conspiracy theorists was more right about him. He continued, choosing words carefully.

"Say everything is an applecart. Well, I wrecked it. I didn't mean to. I knew I'd fucked up, bad, right away. And I gave everything to—to put the apples back in, ok?”

She nodded, even though she had no clue what event he was referring to. Maybe the spree of mass shootings, like in the bank? But that had been both of them, hadn't it? Unless, as the less-than-reliable webhost of morethanbrothers.net insisted, that had been an elaborate frame job by lookalikes.

Maybe Sam blamed himself for infuriating (or inspiring) whoever the hell would go that far for a frame-up?

"But having done that,” Sam continued, “it's a part of me now. It's like—well, it's like they say your first kill is the hardest. I mean, it varies, some."

Sam didn't act like he'd said anything out of the ordinary, and she decided not to call him on it, in favor of listening for all the details she could glean. As long as he was talking so freely, she’d let him.

"But the principle holds true about a lot of things. The first time is the hardest, because after that, you know you can do it, and what it costs. And that means you keep weighing it against…” Sam struggled for words, took a breath, blew it out again. “I shouldn't… Nothing should ever be worth…”

Sam stopped, inhaled even deeper. Looked at her and changed what he was going to say.

“I don't know, for sure, that Dean’s dead. There’s... no body. But he would have contacted me by now, if he could. We were facing some serious shit, and he went in, with… with our buddy. Shit got taken care of, but... I haven't heard anything from either of them since. And I shouldn't...

"I want to go look for my brother, more than anything. But that's not the right kind of wish—well, I mean, it's just that loving someone 'more than anything' is fucked up." He huffed in bitter amusement at some private remembrance. She thought she felt him wince, too.

Amelia wondered if there was some kind of criminal underground warfare going on that Sam and his brother had been mixed up in. It sounded like that more than anything else. And if Dean and whoever else had been with him had been “disappeared” by some mob boss, no wonder Sam was conflicted about holding onto hope that they might still be alive.

"Sooner or later, if I start looking down that path, it'll lead me to places I really shouldn't go."

She had no problem believing that.

Sam stared up at the ceiling for a moment. "I shouldn't wreck it all again. You'd think a screw-up that massive, it'd only happen once, right? But I know enough to know… that's what's waiting down that path, if I start chasing what happened to my brother.

"Nearly all of me is screaming, inside, to go after him, not to stop, no matter the cost. ...And that's why I can't. I can't let myself go, because that part of me would do it. I'd knock over the applecart, again, damn the whole world to hell, or tear apart the barriers between—um, I mean, barriers that keep order in some places and chaos other places, by trying to find him.”

He was silent for long enough she thought maybe he'd finished talking. Then he said, "That's what scares me. I know Dean would be pissed at me for, for abandoning him. He always feels right and wrong like it's instinctive. But me… once I start down that path, I’m pretty sure he’d be even more pissed with what I'd do.”

Was Sam talking about being responsible for more deaths? It seemed like he must be. But did Sam want to go on a randomly murderous rampage, or did he ‘just’ want to dig into a hornet’s nest of _other_ murderous psychopaths?

Whichever the case, it seemed like a good thing for him to hold himself back from it. She should probably try to encourage that.

What the hell could she say, though, Amelia wondered.

Sam was tense beside her, she realized. It wasn't obvious, but he was holding himself still with deliberate effort.

“The military might be fucking lying to me about Don’s death,” she said abruptly. “They’ve been cagey as hell about the details. It fucking hurts, but I'll never get to know exactly how he died. But,” she reached out, gingerly poking him in his chest for emphasis, “I'm not flinging myself against a brick wall on some long-shot hope of beating answers out of those clowns.”

He looked at her, a little incredulous, then almost reluctantly chuffed a laugh. With relief, she felt that tension leaving his body.

"You shouldn't still be with me," he told her. "You should be running as far and fast as you could, if you weren't just as cracked as I am."

She shrugged, and didn't say anything.

Sam held her a little tighter. "But I'm glad you're here. Even if it's selfish of me. I'm glad for however long we can make this last."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Post S10 finale, I was like, shit, I think now I _have_ to write the one where Sam worries about dooming the world on purpose.


	6. Changing Point of View (Sighting Shore)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting to really know someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Sorry it has taken me such an extremely long time to finish this story. Huge thanks to [Nomercles](http://www.ao3.org/users/nomercles) for betaing this chapter and repeatedly telling me she liked it. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> There's a little residual Amelia PoV at the beginning of this chapter, mucking up the neat turn-taking schematic. She's rude like that, what can I say?

Amelia thought that their sex life might plateau at some point. Maybe after that time he put a twitching, humming dildo in her and then took her dancing. She was sweating and shaky, half out of it, long before they'd danced an hour, and when he crowded into the restroom behind her and pulled the knobbly thing out, pushed in with his cock, fucked her up against the sinks with her elbows braced on the counter—staring at their reflections in the mirrors as sweat dripped down her cleavage, darkening the fancy deep red dress she wore…

Well, it was hotter than hell. She tried to protest about the unlocked door, uselessly: she couldn't put weight behind the words and Sam ignored her except to grin and shove her dress up even farther on one side, baring and framing their hips like a picture to anyone who might come in the door… she shuddered and got even wetter. 

And if later, after they were done, she found a doorstop kicked against the door from the inside that Sam must have used to keep anyone from disturbing them before they'd even gotten started, well, it didn't really need to be mentioned. 

Another time he dragged her up the deserted flight of stairs to the roof access door, only instead of going out, he set her on the railing, her back to the open drop down to the main floor, and proceeded to fuck her as she shrieked and wrapped her legs around him, then her arms. Her yells bounced echoing around the closed stairwell. She wondered if it was more or less soundproofed here than in her room, then decided it was a little late to start worrying about that. It was a shitty motel; loud sex could just fucking be part of the ambiance. 

So what if an extremely disproportionate amount of ambiance came from her? Other fuckers could just fucking deal with not getting fucked this good, she decided muzzily. She shared this thought with Sam, or tried to, and he tucked his face into her neck, chortling. The sudden shift in weight as he crunched forward threatened to nearly overbalance her, send her plummeting down over the rail, until he yanked her back up away from the fall. A crazy laugh bubbled in her throat. 

So Sam was more than attentive as an inventive lover. But she couldn't help wondering how long it could last. 

\---------------  
\---------------

Sam had a lot of free time while Amelia was at work. She was still the night-shift vet, so he got used to sleeping when she did and puttering around the motel while she went off to her gainful employment. A lot of the motel handyman work he did in the early morning, but he couldn't do anything noisy during the wee hours if there were sleeping guests, which there usually were. He started taking Dog for longer walks, after he got strong enough. He cleaned the apartment, and he skimmed the Internet and newspapers without really delving deep. He didn't want to see a hunt. 

Okay, so he got a little bored. Stir-crazy, maybe, even. He'd always been a reader, a book-lover; it was just that the stuff to hand had mostly always had to do with hunting, or with keeping up in school. Pure escapism seldom passed muster when he had always had so much to accomplish. 

And Amelia—or Amelia's pared-down motel room belongings, anyway—had two kinds of books, piled carelessly on the table by the bed: hefty veterinary textbooks and lurid romance novels. 

He held out for a while. But by the first time Amelia came home in the middle of her shift because the clinic had to be closed for fumigation, it was to find him guiltily trying to shove _Prince of the Underworld_ back into the middle of the pile. 

He could see her trying not to laugh. She was taken aback for a moment, first, and then her expression shifted into a suspiciously blank and rigid cast. He gave up on hiding the book and just scowled at her. 

But just like whenever Dean used to catch him in an embarrassing moment, she wasn't at all discouraged by his scowl. Instead unholy delight broke over her face. "Just a little light reading, Sam?"

"Shut up," he grumbled. "Don't make me beat you."

She wasn't much impressed by this threat. "Is this how you've been spending all your time? How many of those have you read so far?"

He could feel—damn—a flush creeping up his face. "Not like you had anything else to read around here…" he muttered defensively. 

"No, it's not like you've got the entire internet at your fingertips, of course…" she needled him, not showing mercy. Suddenly her eyes went wide. "Oh my god. On top of the stairs last week… You were totally going for that scene on the Sightless Cliffs in _Plummeting Towards Love!_ "

Sam looked, if possible, even guiltier, for a moment. He shrugged, not quite casually enough. "The spine was pretty creased there. Your favorite part?"

She folded her arms. "That's a wild guess. Prove it in a court of law, mister."

He stretched his arms up over his head and rolled up to his feet. "Yeah? You sure we can't reach some other kind of a settlement?"

He could hear her breath catch. He leered at her a little.

Then she laughed, breaking the mood, unexpectedly. "How about we eat something, Don Juan? I don't know about you, but I could go for some of that quiche?"

\-----

Amelia was fairly quiet, as Sam watched her make a salad for a side dish. She watched him back, thoughtfully, as they moved about the tiny kitchenette, getting food out. The space wasn't really big enough for two people; they brushed up against each other every so often. The mood wasn't uncomfortable, precisely, just a little different. It had shifted—the frisson that meant they were a hairsbreadth away from jumping into bed was barely there at all. Instead they watched each other. They took their time setting the table, and sitting down, and eating. 

Amelia toyed with her fork after her plate was empty. Sam couldn't tell what she'd been thinking, but it looked like she might be ready to spit it out. She set the fork down and propped her elbows on the table. "Can I ask…? Um. What was it like, the last time you were with… with a woman?"

Sam sat back. Of all the questions… he hadn't been prepared for it, but surprisingly, he thought it was one he could answer. "It was half a year ago, maybe close to a year now. I'd met her a few times before; she was, um, intensely interested, but I wasn't. So she showed up when Dean and I were in Vegas—I'm pretty sure she was just pretending to run into me 'on accident,' considering—and bought me a drink, and slipped a roofie into it."

He looked up, warily, waiting for Amelia's reaction: it didn't disappoint. "What? You're kidding," she spluttered, incredulously. "She didn't!"

"Oh, yeah," Sam continued, with the grim humor of someone sharing a disaster story too absurd to be immediately believed. "Within half an hour, I thought she was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen. I was falling all over myself, declaring undying love, asking her to marry me, the whole nine yards…" Sam's mouth twisted, reminiscing.

"What kind of roofie makes you want to marry somebody?" Amelia asked, scowling.

Sam shrugged. "We were in Vegas. It seemed like we should do it," he said, evading the roofie question, awkwardly. 

"It didn't really go that far!" Amelia protested, still disbelieving, laughing. "You did not get Vegas married to some crazy chick who drugged you!"

"To be fair," Sam said, faux-thoughtfully, "I think her original plan was just to get me to be her date to her high school reunion. I kind of pushed the whole marriage angle pretty hard, once I was under the influence: told her life was too short and uncertain, we should grab happiness where it was offered, all the most saccharine stuff you could imagine. I'm not proud of it," he told her, sardonically. "There may have been tears involved. It's entirely possible she mostly agreed just to make it stop.”

"And I repeat: what the fuck kind of roofies were those?" Amelia asked, more seriously now. 

"Expensive," Sam said, darkly. "Stuff she shouldn't have been screwing with." He shrugged again, hopefully conveying that that was all the answer he had to give. "Anyway, long story short, after the wedding we drove across the country, and then when she ran out of her supply, she brained me with a waffle iron and tied me to the bed."

Amelia was looking really alarmed. "…A waffle iron?" she repeated faintly. 

"Dean figured it was what people were supposed to give someone as a wedding present," Sam explained, fully aware that he wasn't explaining anything. He couldn't stop the corner of his mouth from twitching at the memory of Dean's bewildered consternation. 

Amelia saw it, and furiously cried, "Oh! Sam Winchester, you are so full of bullshit!"

Sam held his hands up, grinning. "I swear, every word of this is the truth," he protested, pouring sincerity into his eyebrows. "I was just remembering Dean trying to figure me out when I sprung our surprise wedding on him. His face—I still wish I had a picture of that moment." He was laughing, he couldn't help it. There had been nothing funny about it at the time, but in hindsight, telling the story out loud, to another person, for the first time—there was just something so absurd about the entire affair. 

"Anyway, I got free from the bed, and Dean and I talked a little more sense into Becky than she'd had before, we dealt with her dealer, filed an annulment of the marriage, and everybody went home happy."

Amelia's brow was furrowed. "Becky?" She murmured, like the name was familiar. She shook her head, obviously filing it away for later. "I'm surprised you aren't massively angry at this woman," she told Sam. 

Sam thought about that. "I was angry, I guess, at the time. But, well…" he rolled his shoulders a bit, "life really is too short for crap you don't mean. It was a lot less traumatic, in the end, than most of my other relationships." 

She shook her head and pointed at him. "That is a profoundly terrible thing to say."

He shrugged again, finally, and let the silence extend; he wasn't about to take it back. But he didn't want to delve into yet more of his life's messes tonight, either. The silence drew out—comfortable, contemplative. Sam wasn't sure what Amelia had made of the story, or what she was thinking about now. 

It really had surprised him how eager he'd been to get married, once the drug had gotten into him. It was difficult to be completely positive, but he thought that that was a desire that had come mostly from him. The drug had caused feelings of overwhelming love; what he did with it was still his own. He suspected that if Dean had gotten the same potion, he'd have spent the week holed up with his paramour banging their brains out, and possibly cuddling until he couldn't ignore starvation anymore. It would have been saccharine, but Sam couldn't picture Dean deciding that what he most wanted in the world was a legally binding traditional wedding complete with church bells. 

No, that was all Sam. He'd been about to propose to Jess, way back when; he had thought at the time that his nightmares about her death had only been triggered by his intentions becoming serious. 

Hell, for all he knew, they had been: he tried to remember whether Brady had had any hint of his plans, but it was too long ago now. 

At any rate, apparently he really did have a deep-seated desire for a permanent relationship, probably some psychologically entrenched association with normal life—the storybook romance, the picket fence, the dog. 

He looked at Amelia again: she happened to be looking back at him. Their gazes caught, held; he watched her come to a decision.

"I've been thinking about what you said the first day you came in here," she said. "That a motel isn't really part of the town, that it isn't part of anything. Maybe—maybe we should get a place. Something real. For us both."

He sucked in a breath. Despite filling his lungs, it still felt like he had no air. "Amelia, you don't have to—I mean, are you sure?"

It was her turn to shrug, awkwardly, glancing away before she looked into his face. "You're a good man, Sam. This whole thing could've—could've gone—I trust you." She took a deep breath, let it out. She continued almost fiercely, "You deserve a life, a real life. It's okay for us to be happy—to want to be happy, I think."

Her certainty wavered a bit at the end, and she looked at him questioningly, waiting for a response from him. He grabbed her hands in his, shoving his chair out awkwardly with the backs of his legs, so he could stand up and come around the table to her. He drew her to stand up as well. 

"I think that sounds like one of the best things I've ever heard," he told her honestly. 

It was funny, really. For all the kisses they'd shared up ‘til this moment, they'd never really done tender. 

They did it now. 

\-------

They looked at houses for the next three days, and settled on a smallish fixer-upper that was even more affordable after Sam got done pointing out all the fixing he'd have to do. Amelia's bank account covered most of the down payment, but Sam contributed a respectable chunk; the last of the dragon gold went into it. Plus, Sam had found time before taking down Dick Roman to invest a little in the stock market, betting against Sucrocorp. That had come to a nice little sum.

You had to scrounge your pay benefits where you could, living the life of a Hunter. 

He hesitated a moment before signing his real name to the paperwork; they always used fake names for motels. When they were kids, of course, they used their real names, so that they could go to school. But he hadn't lived anywhere under Winchester since Stanford, unless you counted prison, which Sam didn't. 

This last year had been even worse; Dean's colorful collection of aliases burned, just Smith and Smith, squatting where no one would even realize they'd been there… it was like being a living ghost, skimming through the world without a trace.

Sam was so, so sick of it. Maybe that was why he'd written his own name at the vet's office; some record that he was there, that he cared, that he'd tried to do the right thing. And now he had Amelia standing by his shoulder. Would she understand if he tried to use an alias to start their new life under?

Sam took up the pen and wrote a careful 'Sam Winchester,' then scrawled his signature underneath it and dated it. It was done. His name would get filed away, added to the county records; maybe some hunter going through them in the local library, years from now, would see it and wonder. But there had to be other people in the country with his name; it wasn't that uncommon. 

He smiled at Amelia, and wrapped his arm around her as they watched the papers get shuffled away. 

\-------

He should have known, he thought, bitterly, a week later, looking at the unmarked van parked across the street from their new house. A government surveillance van if he'd ever seen one, or he'd eat his jacket. He should have known better than to be so complacent; just because everyone had been drugged into insensibility in the meantime didn't mean he wasn't still on the Most Wanted List. He looked away from the van before it was obvious he'd been staring, and didn't let his stride hesitate or slow. He walked up the front steps, back of his neck prickling with the knowledge he was being watched, and forced himself not to hurry as he unlocked the door and went inside. 

He did feel a little better once the door was shut between him and the van, as irrational as he knew that was. He felt even better when Amelia came up and pecked him on the lips. 

"Hey, hot stuff! Good day?"

Just act normal. "Yeah," Sam said. "It's been a really good day." 

He kissed her back.

** The End. **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sequel is a possibility. I may be bribed. ;)


End file.
